Columbia's Final Mission

In my Engineering Decision Making and Risk Management class last week we discussed the space shuttle Columbia accident using the case study Columbia's Final Mission by Michael Roberto et al.  (http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=32441).
The case study highlights topics related to making decisions in the presence of ambiguous threats, including the nature of the response, organizational culture, and accountability.
It also discusses the results of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html).
When discussing the case in class, a key activity is re-enacting a critical Mission Management Team (MMT) meeting, which gives students a chance to identify opportunities to improve decision making. 

My class also discussed the design of warning systems, risk management, risk communication, different decision-making processes, and problems in decision making, all of which reinforced the material in the textbook (http://www.isr.umd.edu/~jwh2/textbook/index.html).

We concluded that the structure of the MMT made effective risk communication difficult and key NASA engineers and managers failed to describe the risk to those in charge.
Moreover, the decision-makers used a decision-making process that prematurely accepted a claim that the foam strike would cause only a turn-around problem, not a safety-of-flight issue, and this belief created another barrier to those who were concerned about the safety of the astronauts and wanted more information.

Failures such as the Columbia accident are opportunities to learn, and case studies are a useful way to record and transmit information about failures, which is essential to learning.
We learned how ineffective risk communication and poor decision-making processes can lead to disaster.